Hello! (By the way, if you’re wondering how a guy with such severe scoliosis could have been a formidable fighter, it’s believed that the curvature didn’t manifest until his teens, likely as a result of an injury.)

PW! Thanks for bringing up the identificaiton of Richard III’s skeleton.

It’s a fascinating story, isn’t it? I’ve been following it in various places; the BBC has several different stories, from the early stages of the dig through the revelation of the reconstructed face.

It’s such an interesting combination of science – mitochondrial DNA–who’d even heard of that not so very long ago?-plus all the usual puzzle pieces being put together, including the battle wounds in the skull (shudder), the location that matched one of the legends about where his body was hidden, etc., etc.

Who would think that in just 500 years the location of an abbey church could completely disappear, and so much soil accumulate?

Anyway, fascinating.

Here’s the deal: It wouldn’t have any sense for someone like Richard — who up to the time his brother died was universally known as a loyal, able and principled person, and utterly devoted to Edward — to have killed his nephews when they had no claim on the throne. Titulus Regius kept them off the throne quite effectively, without need of assassins.

We’re talking about the man who, in two short years, created the modern British legal system (including the right to bail) and granted a great deal of liberties to his subjects. By contrast, Henry Tudor came up with the Star Chamber and — in one of the skeevier moves not committed by a Texas Republican — tried to have Richard’s soldiers brought up on charges of treason, by backdating the start of his own reign to one day before Bosworth. (That one didn’t fly.) Furthermore, if the rumor had been going around in England during Richard’s lifetime that he’d offed his own nephews, he would have been out there denying it quite loudly, as he did the somewhat less horrible rumor that he was planning to marry his niece after his wife died.

Lastly, when Henry himself made his own case for kingship to a skeptical England post-Bosworth, he accused Richard in very general terms of “tyranny” — but didn’t provide much in the way in specifics, much less mention the murders of the princes. One would think that Henry, whose right-hand man was John Morton, Bishop of Ely — and as Richard’s bitterest enemy, the first person to spread the rumor that the princes were dead by Richard’s order if not hand — would have a) known about the princes’ deaths, and b) been keen to use them to justify his taking the throne of the man he’d just seen killed in battle.

A couple of the places I’ve been reading have long threads discussing just this, including one where the mother of a son with what she describes as a similar degree of scoliosis vigorously disputes the theory that it would have made him “hunchbacked” or crippled. Obviously he couldn’t have been crippled, having fought and led armies with his brother on multiple occasions.
There are so many degrees of scoliosis, causing various amounts of pain or disability.
I’ve been reminded by the discussions that Shakespeare was writing in the time of Henry VIII, and therefore was motivated to show Richard as evil, and thus tarnished his reputation forever.

And of course, we can blame Henry VIII for the disappearance of the Greyfriars Church as well, since it was destroyed during the “Dissolution,” when Henry ordered monasteries disbanded and monks and nuns dispersed, and pulled down amazing numbers of churches and monasteries all over the country. And thus, Richard’s burial place disappeared for more than five centuries.

yes, it’s a fascinating story. I enjoyed seeing the facial reconstruction.

Agree with everything you say.

Are we talking to ourselves alone? Nobody else is interested?

I can’t imagine not being interested, but then I’ve been fascinated by medieval history for years, and more recently, by the Plantagenets.

This is a really cool archaeology story, and I’m glad to see it featured here. Of course, what will really shake the pillars of English history is when some enterprising archaeologist exhumes the remains of Richard IV.

Hi, Elliott! Whew, it’s not just me and PW!

Yeah, the reconstruction is just…amazing. So much like the portraits, even though what I read is that the sculptor based it entirely on the bone structure for the rebuilding, only going to the portraits for coloring, eye color, and hairstyle.

I’m not ready to give Richard a pass on the princes but the story goes to show how the winners get to write/rewrite history

Richard’s death and burial occurred a few short decades before Henry VIII would order the Dissolution of the Monasteries; the persons who got the land confiscated from the Church tended to remove all traces of the Church from it. What saved Richard’s resting place was that for a few hundred years after his death, it was in the hands of families that chose to keep the area as a garden and thus largely undisturbed.

LOL Love the Blessed

Blackadder’s one of my all time TV faves

Egg-zackly.

We’ll probably never know about the princes, but I suspect, as PW says, since nobody suggested it while Richard lived, it probably wasn’t him.

Evil Dr Puma, was that a BlackAdder clip? I’ve only seen a few BA’s, so don’t recognize them unless Rowan Atkinson is in the scene.

PW – you sure are an expert on the subject! It’s hard for me to keep track of all the goings and comings of the War(s) of the Roses

Yup. Richard’s accused of killing his nephews to gain the throne (never mind that Titulus Regius kept them off of it so there was no need for him to have killed them), and he’s the Monster King. Henry Tudor, known as Henry VII, threw scores of his foes onto the chopping block or prison (or, in the case of the princes’ mother, Edward’s bigamous wife Elizabeth Woodville, a nunnery) for any pretext or none, and those acts are written off as the sensible and justified policy of a prudent monarch.

Ha! I just noticed the subtitle: “Truth is the Daughter of Time.”

Was it Josephine Tey who persuaded you that Richard had been wronged?

Yes, it is. Brian Blessed was hilarious as the (fictional) Richard IV in Blackadder I, but there only seem to be a couple of clips of him on YouTube.

Yes, and Henry had a very elderly Duchess or Countess with a good claim to the throne (can’t recall her name at the moment) executed, as well as (I think) her son, to make sure all the threats were eliminated.

Henry VII was utterly ruthless, no question about it. Really, the only good Tudor was Elizabeth.

It helps to have played a bit of Kingmaker when growing up. :-) The York and Lancaster factions were the players everyone knows about, but there were the Buckinghams, Rivers and Dorsets, too.

A-yep.

And with that, I’m going to be a party pooper and go to bed early. Talk amongst yourselves and be nice to Ellie!

I watched this version of The Trial of Richard III not so long ago:

Introduction by His Royal Highness, Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester. A modern trial by jury at the Old Bailey of one of the most famous events in English history. Conducted on the afternoon and evening of 21st February, 1984 it was held almost 500 years after the death of the last of the Plantagenet Kings, King Richard III, on Bosworth Field, the last of the English monarchs to die in battle.

The charge is that King Richard III did, in or about the month of august, 1483, in the Tower of London, murder Prince Edward, Prince of Wales, and Prince Richard, Duke of York.

King Richard III stands indicted at the bar of history. In this unique work the members of the jury have been invited to deliver their verdict on a matter whch has been the subject of fierce controversy and dispute for over 500 years: whether or not King Richard III was responsible for the alleged murder of the two young princes.

But looking for that link, I found this American version with Rehnquist presiding:

A celebrity panel of justices and law professors heard testimony concerning whether King Richard III murdered or conspired to murder his two nephews, Edward and Richard, in 1483. Mr. Walda and Mr. Fitzpatrick, two Indiana Law School alumni, and Mr. Long and Ms. Porter, two current students, argued the case. In his will, King Edward IV placed his brother, Richard of Gloucester, in charge of the realm until his older son Edward could assume the throne. However, after King Edward’s death in 1483, Parliament ruled that both his sons were illegitimate and therefore unable to succeed him and asked Richard to become King Richard III. Shortly thereafter, Edward’s two sons disappeared and were never seen again. Justices Rehnquist and Williams sided with the defense while Justice Shepard sided with the prosecution.

oh I never heard of that – fun!

To elaborate: Tey’s book clinched it for me, but what started me off on wondering about Richard was Shakespeare’s play on him. I read it in high school in one of my English classes, and it was a shock to see, after having read plays like Cleopatra where the title character and others were complex, living, breathing entities with flaws and with good points, to see a slapstick villain such as Shakespeare’s Richard Crouchback. It was like watching Alan Rickman’s hilarious turn as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Dweebs would be for me a few decades later, so farcial that it made me wonder: Is Shakespeare trying to tell me something?

And with that, I must get to bed. Good night, all!

Rats – my post saying good night and thanking PW for posting this disappeared when I accidentally hit the close button on the screen. Sheesh.

Here’s a couple of interesting links: this one describes the search and how the location was discovered

And this one describes the battle, and the grisly death of the King.

Wow, I never heard of that game, either. So cool! Of course, I’m so old I was a grown woman past board games when it came out, it seems. I think I’d have been all over it, with a friend who was also into historical play (our make-believe was nearly always historical). Too bad we missed it.

*heh* Was Shakespeare the first revisionist, PW…? ;-)

Sweet dreams, PW…!

a great positive or at least neutral scholarly bio called Richard III was written by Paul Murray Kendall. I really liked it. Vivid. Dude was cremated and his ahes were let out at Bosworth field.
here’s a link to it on amazon

Well, he sure wanted to please the ruling monarch of his time, so the Tudors had to look good, and therefore, the last Plantagenet had to look baaaaaad.

*heh* Cui Bono, M’dear…! ;-)

I doubt he was the first–you have to read Augustus’ CV to believe it, or not believe it, as the case may be–but he was certainly a very effective revisionist.

Dating back to Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, even…! ;-)

Yes, historians, even playwrights as respected as Shakespeare, write with their own point of view and always have.

Still, whoever killed the young princes, isn’t it undisputed that it was Richard III who declared them illegitmate so that he could succeed to the throne and then imprisoned them?

Absolutely not.

Besides, Shakespeare (or whoever wrote the works that we attribute to Shakespeare, never claimed to be a historian. He claimed only to be a playwright.

Besides, who says the latest version of a historical event is the most accurate?

Thanks for that link.

The modern reconstruction is not too far off from the painting done of him in the early 1500′s. So, kudos to the the early painter, whoever he or she was.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Portrait+of+Richard+III&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

I am not sure how accurately they can reconstruct a nose from a skull anyway.

You’re not alone! I’m thrilled to see Richard III honored. I read Josephine Tey’s book The Daughter Of Time a while ago and was touched by his good and honorable nature.

I’m sorry to give this comment after you’ve gone to bed, PW, but my internet was down, and maybe you look again in the morning. Great post! And I’m really happy that FDL takes an interest in such questions.

I’d just finished a Philippa Gregory historical fiction novel, The White Queen, the story of Elizabeth Woodville, of the Rivers part of the House of Lancaster, who married Edward IV, the reigning king from the House of York.

So, the news about Richard III was very interesting to me.

The novel is clearly fictionalized and written by an author who has scant love for the Tudors it seems to me, but very interesting, with enough fact to make things logical and plausible.

Seems most of the kings during that brutal time were utterly ruthless, wiping out any possible contenders for their thrones in order to consolidate power.

In this novel, a way is found to try to protect the heir apparent….

Here’s the deal: It wouldn’t have any sense for someone like Richard — who up to the time his brother died was universally known as a loyal, able and principled person, and utterly devoted to Edward — to have killed his nephews when they had no claim on the throne. Titulus Regius kept them off the throne quite effectively, without need of assassins.

Beg to differ.

I’ll leave aside the hagiography of Richard III as unworthy of comment and simply review the facts:

First of all, if an act of Parliament could keep Edward V off the throne, it would only take another act to remove that obstacle. Titulus Regius was therefore an incredibly fragile instrument on which to base his claim to the throne, especially in unsettled political times.

Second, as long as Edward was alive supporters of the House of Lancaster had a figure to rally around and a credible candidate to put forward as an alternative to Richard – one whose claim to the throne was in constitutional terms vastly stronger than Richard’s own.

In short Richard had every reason to murder Edward V and his brother.

Motive aside the circumstances reek of Richard’s guilt. The fact is two royal princes nominally under the king’s protection don’t just disappear from one of the king’s residences without anybody noticing. Rumors of the death of the princes had been circulating for a year and a half before Richard’s own death at Bosworth Field in 1485. Those rumors were highly corrosive to Richard’s perceived legitimacy and helped undermine popular support for the Yorkist party. If the princes were still alive how can one account for Richard’s failure to produce them and dispel the damaging rumors once and for all?

If the princes had in fact been murdered it is scarcely credible that such a momentous act would have been undertaken without at least Richard’s tacit approval. And if it had it would have been in Richard’s interest to expose the guilty parties and mete out summary justice, both to publicly disassociate himself from the crime and because such an act would have amounted to treason which no monarch – least of all one as compromised as Richard III- could afford to ignore without doing grievous damage to their own authority and credibility.

There is no doubt that Richard got a lot of bad press because history is written by the winners. The truth is that both sides in the War of the Roses had plenty of blood on their hands, and on closer examination very few of the principals make very attractive figures. In politics nice guys really do finish last. It’s curious to me that the discovery of Richard’s body would inspire a movement in the complete opposite direction to try to rehabilitate him as some kind of visionary statesman, rather than simply accepting him as the ambitious, ruthless and deeply flawed human being portrayed in the historical record.

It’s curious to me that the discovery of Richard’s body would inspire a movement in the complete opposite direction to try to rehabilitate him as some kind of visionary statesman, rather than simply accepting him as the ambitious, ruthless and deeply flawed human being portrayed in the historical record.

I withdraw my confusion.

I can easily see how this could happen if you history education is limited to works of popular fiction.